Alexander Shingleton: Principle Investigator

I got my BA in Zoology from the University of Oxford (St. Peter’s College, 1993-6), and my PhD from the University of Cambridge (Clare College, 1998-2001), working with Dr. William Foster on the evolution of ant-aphid interactions. I then moved to Princeton University for my postdoctoral training with Dr. David Stern, working first on pea aphids before switching to using Drosophila as my model organism.

In 2006 I started my own lab, first as an assistant professor, then associate professor, in the Department of Zoology (now Integrative Biology) at Michigan State University. I left MSU in 2013 to become an associate professor at Lake Forest College, IL. In 2018 I took up my current position as an associate professor, now professor, in the Department of Biological Sciences at the University of Illinois at Chicago, as part of the Evolution and Ecology group.

I am, broadly speaking, an evolutionary biologist, with a special focus on the developmental regulation and evolution of morphology, particularly morphological plasticity. My research spans multiple levels of biological organization, incorporating molecular and developmental biology, physiology and behavior. I primarily use Drosophila as a model organism, exploiting the wide variety of genetic manipulations that are available in fruit flies. I also have a long-standing interest in modeling biological processes mathematically.